(The Kids Sitting in the Audience for Someone Else’s Dream)
Dance families talk a lot about the dancers.
The practices.
The costumes.
The competitions.
The trophies.
But there are always other kids sitting in the audience too.
The siblings.
The ones eating snacks in the hallway, doing homework backstage, or falling asleep in the chairs during awards.
If you’re raising a dancer, you probably know this part of dance life too. Competitions aren’t just two minutes on stage. They’re long weekends, hours of waiting, and entire families learning how to support one child’s passion.
In our family, that reality looks a little different.
Some of our kids dance.
Some of them don’t.
And some of them have spent years sitting in those competition chairs before deciding if dance was even something they wanted.
Dance didn’t become our family identity overnight.
It evolved slowly over the years — and so did the role of the siblings.
When Dance Was Just Recitals
Before competition teams and travel weekends, dance was just something several of our kids did for fun.
At one point we had five recreational dancers.
Recitals were a big event, but it wasn’t our whole life. Kids tried it for a year or two, then moved on to other activities. Some stayed longer, some quit.
Eventually the older kids graduated out of dance, and the younger ones started (age-gap siblings).
Then COVID happened.
For a while, dance basically disappeared from our family.
When Only One Child Danced
After all of that, only one of our kids continued dancing.
She joined the competition team, and suddenly our weekends looked very different.
Instead of once a year recitals, competitions meant:
• early mornings
• long days in auditoriums
• waiting hours between routines
• sitting through awards ceremonies
That’s when you really see what dance competitions are like for the siblings.
Sometimes it’s two minutes of dancing… and eight hours of waiting.
The Kid Who Didn’t Love Competitions
One of our kids especially hated competitions when he was younger.
At the time we only had older siblings 50/50, so when competition weekends happened on the other parent’s time, he had to tag along.
He had Hot Wheels.
He had snacks.
Eventually he had a hand-me-down phone.
But there are only so many ways to entertain a kid during a long competition day.
He would sit patiently through big sister’s routines because we expected him to be respectful and support her sister dance but the rest of time he was able to quietly entertain himself.
But he made it very clear he was not impressed by the waiting part.
The Picture That Sums Up Dance Life
One of my favorite photos from those years is from a long competition day.
It had been nearly twelve hours.
In the picture, my husband is asleep in his chair.
Next to him, 8 is completely passed out too.
That picture captures dance life perfectly.
Long days.
Exhausted parents.
Sleeping siblings.
And still cheering when the routine starts.
The Teenager Who Doesn’t Dance
We also have one child who doesn’t dance anymore at all.
She danced for a couple years when she was younger, but as a teenager now, it’s not something she wants to do.
She still supports her siblings though.
She usually comes to one or two events a year, and when she does, she makes a point to watch every sibling perform at least once.
But we also try really hard to make sure her life doesn’t revolve around dance.
The Zoo Trip That Almost Didn’t Happen
One competition weekend we decided to plan something just for her.
We stayed an extra day out of town so we could take her to a special zoo she had always wanted to visit.
The day did not go as planned.
Our tire popped.
We pulled over in a parking lot roundabout in our beat-up van full of kids.
The spare tire was flat.
Roadside assistance took four hours to even show up.
At one point our jack actually bent under the weight of the van.
It was chaos.
Eventually another amazing dance dad stepped in, took our tire to Walmart down the road, and came back with it repaired.
By the time everything was fixed, the zoo was about to close.
But we still went.
We paid a ton of money for our entire family to walk that zoo for the last two hours before closing.
Then we drove three hours home.
Totally worth it.
Because that day wasn’t about dance.
It was about her.
When More Kids Joined Dance
Over the years our dance family grew again.
Kids who used to sit and watch eventually decided they wanted to dance too.
Sometimes the studio environment pulls them in.
Sometimes it’s the costumes.
Sometimes it’s watching siblings on stage.
But sometimes it’s something even simpler.
“Where Are My Awards?”
Last year after the recital, our youngest kid had a realization.
He loved dance.
But he didn’t love the commitment like 7.
He only wanted to dance a little bit.
Our studio actually has different levels of competition commitment, so that worked.
After recital ended, we started walking toward the exit.
Suddenly he stopped and looked confused.
“Where are my awards?”
He had seen his sister get awards at competitions for years.
Recitals didn’t include that.
Once he learned he could compete and still only dance an hour a week…
He was sold.
Dance Looks Different for Every Kid
Now this year will be something new for our family.
We’ll have three dancers competing, spread across three different age groups.
One dances multiple hours a week on the full competition team.
Two are on the intermediate team.
The youngest is proudly dancing his one hour a week — but still takes it very seriously.
There’s no fighting to go to dance in our house.
He walks in excited to learn the choreography every week.
One hour at a time.
Making Sure the Siblings Don’t Disappear
Dance takes a lot of time.
There’s no pretending it doesn’t.
And while people often assume the biggest worry is the cost, the truth is money isn’t the only thing I worry about when it comes to dance.
I worry about the time, the balance, and making sure the other kids don’t quietly disappear into the background while one child is on stage
But we’ve always tried really hard to make sure the siblings don’t disappear in the middle of it.
We plan ahead.
We keep a family calendar so everyone can add their activities.
A lot of the work behind making this all function happens quietly in the background — the kind of hidden parenting work most people never see — but it’s what keeps everyone’s activities from colliding with each other.
If we can’t drive someone somewhere, we reach out to siblings or friends’ parents so kids don’t have to miss out.
Dance may be a big part of our family now, but it’s never supposed to be the only thing.
What Siblings Actually Learn From Dance
The siblings of dance kids learn things you can’t really teach any other way.
They learn patience.
They learn how to support someone else’s moment.
They learn that sometimes you sit through a long day just so someone you love can have two minutes on stage.
And sometimes, if they’re lucky…
They eventually end up dancing too.
Photo by http://www.kaboompics.com
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